Powerful Grip, Slide-Out Tray: Küat Grip 6 Ski and Snowboard Rack Review

Vehicle space on a ski trip is in high demand, often leaving no space for skis inside your car. The roof is a great place to store skis or snowboards to and from the mountain, and it can even look good on your vehicle. Some challenges come with a roof rack, too — but fortunately, the Küat Grip 6 Ski and Snowboard Rack aims to solve those. 

The Grip has an innovative design with a slide-out tray to make the rack more accessible. The superb padding is dense and grippy. There’s an integrated lock for gear safety. From whiteout snowstorms on mountain passes to camping out in ski resort parking lots, it’s essential to know my skis are safe from flying off the roof and are locked to my rack where a thief can’t easily grab them. 

Through a winter season of use in Colorado with various conditions, I put Küat’s top-of-the-line ski rack through its paces on multiple vehicles, including a Subaru Outback and a high-reaching Ford F-150 with a cab-over truck camper. 

In short: The Küat Grip 6 Ski and Snowboard Rack ($498) is a sleek, functional roof rack with powder-coated color options that match its good looks. This rack’s innovative GripLock rubber holds up to six pairs of skis or four snowboards — or a combination of skis and snowboards — firmly in place, while a unique slide-out tray makes loading quick and painless.

Scope out other ski and snowboard racks for your rig’s roof or hitch in the Best Ski and Snowboard Racks buyer’s guide.

Küat Grip 6 Ski and Snowboard Rack Review: Slide-Out Tray

The best part of Küat’s ski rack is its unique slide-out bottom tray. One inevitable downside of roof racks is that you must lean against your dirt-smattered or wet vehicle to reach the rack.

Küat aimed to solve that problem with the Grip. Once the rack is unlocked and the top arm swings open, you can hit a release tab for the bottom tray to slide 2 feet out past the edge of the vehicle. The rack moves away from the roof and partially hovers above the ground. This handy feature makes loading and unloading much easier and keeps your fit clean. 

GripLock Rubber: Unique Grid Pattern Is Super-Grippy

To a basic degree, a ski rack is supposed to do one thing: hold your skis or snowboards safely on your vehicle. Here, one-of-a-kind GripLock rubber lines the inside of the base and swinging arm. The rubber teeth cushion and grip the ski or snowboard bases and top sheets without damaging them and securely hold them in place.

The Grip has supreme interlocking padding — which reminds me of cartoonish teeth gaps — accommodating various lengths, widths, and shapes of hard goods. I also found the rubber teeth offered a better grip on my equipment than other ski racks with a singular layer of rubber — and I’ve tested more than a dozen ski racks for GearJunkie. Plus, the pad design looks cool, too! Overall, the GripLock rubber does a superior job clamping down on precious skis and snowboards. 

Locks

Another standout feature of the Grip 6 is its integrated locks. I frequently bring multiple skis and snowboards to the resort. I always leave an extra one on the rack in the parking lot. After a ski day, I often go out to dinner and leave all of my skis and snowboards on the rack.

I always lock the gear, especially when traveling out of town or doing overnight trips. Confidently leaving my expensive equipment locked securely to my truck takes a massive weight off my shoulders. 

So, what makes these locks so good? First, let’s start with the Flip Mount system, which sits at the base of the rack and attaches it to your crossbars. There is a keyed lock here, meaning you cannot take the rack off the crossbar without a key. Some ski racks include a locking mechanism, but thieves could still steal the entire system from your vehicle — but, not with the Küat!

Next is the actual lock for the ski rack that sandwiches your skis. A slidable switch sits below the large, oversized opening handle; slide it one way to lock and unlock. Sliding the switch to the closed position prevents the rack from opening, which is excellent for ease of mind on the highway. Next to this slider is a spot for a key, and when locked, you cannot slide the lock to an unlocked position. 

Not only were the locks functional and strong, but the keys themselves also stood out from other racks. They came on a key ring (unlike every other rack I have tested). They also had plastic-coated heads, which were more comfortable and easier to grab in cold weather or with gloves on versus a metal key sans ring. It’s the simple things. 

Installation

Besides having a secure installation thanks to the aforementioned crossbar locks, installing the rack took me a considerable amount of time. First, you must install the Flip Mount base to the ski rack with the provided Allen keys, which took me 10 minutes, including unboxing everything. The next step is using an Allen key to extend the mounting strap around the crossbar slowly. 

This step was tedious and challenging while balancing the rack on the crossbar, and the process was not fast. I sized one on the crossbar and set up the other three to match that length on the ground.

The mounting process goes much faster once you set these up for your vehicle’s crossbar. But the first ordeal took me a good 30 minutes in total. Overall, while it was simple, it was time-consuming, leading me to rate the installation as a medium. 

Minor Qualms

I have a few thoughts after spending a season with the Grip rack, where I frequently left my snowboards and skis locked on the rack during my everyday commutes between powder days. My two issues stem from the same piece: the double-hinged joint the ski rack opens on. This joint design can expand when closed, providing more space for stacked skis or snowboards near the hinge. 

Closing the rack with only a few pairs of skis or snowboards is pretty easy to lock down. When the rack is fully loaded, it can be hard to press down with enough force to click into the fully locked position. I am a smaller person at 5’9″, 140 pounds, and my larger friends didn’t seem to struggle as much. 

Warranty Claim

My second critique came up mid-season when I tried to close the rack and ran into an issue with the double-joint system. The outer casing of a bearing inside the joint cracked and broke, causing the ball bearings to fall out and creating noticeable slop in the joint.

Once this piece failed, the rack could also open wider than intended. And this wasn’t an isolated failure — the same piece broke on both levers, not just one side.

While it did make this joint a bit harder to operate, it still held firmly for the rest of the winter season, even under hard use. I contacted Küat and believe this to be a manufacturer defect worthy of a warranty claim: I’m still waiting to hear back and will update this article when I do.

Still, I wanted to include it in this review as my previously tested and used Küat products were always known for durability and construction quality. Overall, these were my only gripes with the rack. It performed very well and has gone through around 8,000 miles on the top of my truck camper, all the while looking good with its powder-coated finish — once I washed off the bugs from the highway.

Küat Grip 6: Who Should Buy?

I firmly believe the Küat Grip 6 is the best roof rack for skis and snowboards that money can buy. It is ideal for long road trips, short trips, ease of access, security purposes, and those wanting a rack that also looks good. With four different color combos, I love to see the pizazz: black metallic with gray anodize, gray metallic with orange anodize, matte black with black anodize, and pearl with silver anodize.

You can find the perfect match for your ride. The premium slide-out feature matches one of the easiest-to-grab release handles and functional locks, making this roof rack a breeze even with mitts on.

This rack was just as at home on my Subaru Outback as on my Ford F-150 — although it was easier to reach on the Subaru. For anyone wanting to get six pairs of skis or four snowboards safely and securely to the mountain, this rack is for you.